


stay on the line until your voice feels nearer

by femmebots



Series: beside young death [1]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: Gender-neutral Reader, Modern Era, Mutual Pining, Other, Pre-Relationship, Reader-Insert, also you have a cat. you're welcome, more like "mutual emotional constipation", you're a cryptozoologist. this is a legitimate career
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:01:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27295345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femmebots/pseuds/femmebots
Summary: It’s kind of infuriating, and kind of nice. Talking to him is nice. This, you’ve gathered, is an unpopular opinion.A fairly standard job, and a very non-standard phone call.
Relationships: Alucard (Castlevania)/Reader, Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Reader
Series: beside young death [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2044399
Comments: 9
Kudos: 91





	stay on the line until your voice feels nearer

**Author's Note:**

> in a moment of pure self-indulgence, i decided to fulfill two of my own impossible fantasies at the same time: romancing alucard castlevania, and finding a reader insert i can actually relate to. if i can maintain that level of self-indulgence, this will probably be the first in a series of interconnected oneshots. in my head this is games-adjacent (with the good bits from netflixvania surgically grafted on) and set a decade or two before aria of sorrow. it doesn't matter, you guys are just here to pine over alucard
> 
> happy halloween!

They’ve put you up in a surprisingly shitty motel, which you expect from the museum and its stretched-thin budget, but not from a government-funded taskforce. God, you put your anti-government convictions aside for science and the benefit of mankind, and this is the thanks you get: a room at the Scrummy Bingus Hotel, and a cup of bland tomato soup from the diner down the street. Justice is dead.

It’s been a long day, as the files strewn across the motel bed can attest, and you doubt it’s over yet. The agents you’re working alongside have set up shop in the room next door, waiting for some new development, like a break in the case or another dead body. Hopefully, the former.

You spent the morning in the town morgue, confirming the local coroner’s suspicions that coyotes don’t rip open a human torso in one smooth swipe. No question about it; this shit’s demons. In the afternoon, a more thorough autopsy turned up a fragment of tooth broken off in one victim’s sternum, which gave you an idea that is clever, and proactive, and very much _not_ part of your job description.

Now here you are, getting nostalgic about undergrad Magical Studies as you try to construct a tracking spell— the operative word being “try.” (Your Enochian is so rusty you should probably get a tetanus shot, just to be safe. But damn it, Jim, you’re a cryptozoologist, not a wizard.) Meanwhile, the bureau agents are doing some digging of their own to find out who’s been summoning creatures from hell and why. So, all in all, a normal Wednesday.

You’re wrangling a stubborn spell clause when your phone rings. To be more precise, it _buzzes_ , because you are a civilized human person who keeps their phone on vibrate. And really, you only notice someone’s calling you because the phone, which you’ve tossed onto the bed behind you, is buzzing against your left ass-cheek like a bumblebee with no personal boundaries.

You pat around blindly for the phone, missing the mark a couple times before you manage to grab hold of it. The caller ID flashes a familiar bat emoji. You blink, uncomprehending.

Well, that’s new.

“Hey?” you say into the speaker, as much a question as it is a greeting.

“Is this a bad time?” Alucard asks. You pause, processing the question. It seems like it’s been ages since you heard his voice— low, faintly accented, unfortunately soporific. You bet he could make a killing doing ASMR videos, not that he needs the money.

It occurs to you, at this point, that your surprise might have come across as irritation. “No, you’re good,” you reply. “It’s just that I was starting to think you only communicated through longform emails, like some kind of medieval serf.”

He’s silent for a moment, just long enough that you check to make sure he hasn’t hung up on you. The guy can be hard to read at the best of times, and not being able to see his face isn’t helping either. To your relief, when Alucard speaks again, you can practically _hear_ the little smirk. “I assure you, I am perfectly capable of using a phone.”

 _Stop leaving my memes on read, then!_ you’re about to shoot back, but he continues: “I’ve looked over the files you sent.”

“Oh, yeah,” you say, reaching across the bed to flick through your autopsy notes. “Yep, definitely a demon. I was right, naturally.” Swanson from the occult artifacts department, who insisted it was a golem, is cordially invited to eat shit.

“Naturally,” he repeats, albeit with a hint of mirth. Whatever, you’ll take that as agreement! You are a genius who is always right. “How goes the investigation?”

You gesture vaguely with your free hand, even though he can’t see it. “The usual. I’m elbow-deep in corpses, the bureau is on some wild goose chase. Also, the local diner has the worst tomato soup I’ve ever eaten. How’s your Enochian, by the way?”

The answer is “better than yours,” because of course it is. It takes longer for you to explain what you’re doing and what the problem is than for Alucard to fix your dangling modifiers. It’s kind of infuriating, and kind of nice. Talking to him is nice.

This, you’ve gathered, is an unpopular opinion. You’ve heard your coworkers call Alucard a lot of things, but _approachable_ isn’t one of them. (Frequent descriptions include _standoffish_ , which is true; _intimidating_ , which you dispute; and _hot_ , about which you plead the fifth.) It’s probably why, despite nominal interest from many other people around the institute, you’re always the one who ends up housing him when he visits the museum on business.

Here’s the thing: he _is_ weird, and aloof, and clearly carrying more baggage than an international airline. But you’ve never been afraid to fill dead air with a long tangent or a stupid joke. And you really like weird.

“Are you still in Prague?” you ask. Last you heard, there was something going on with the catacombs. “What— what time is it there?”

Alucard hums in confirmation. “Half past midnight by now, I imagine.”

“Oh my God,” you reply with as much melodrama as you can muster (spoiler: it’s a lot). Then, as if you have any room to talk, given the appalling state of your sleeping schedule: “What bomb are you about to drop on me? There must be a reason why you’re calling me at one A.M. instead of going to _bed_ , you workaholic.”

“You do know that, strictly speaking, I don’t need to sleep,” he says, which is a bold statement from somebody who napped through the entire seventeenth century. He’s also completely sidestepping your question— that hasn’t escaped your notice.

You snort. “That doesn’t mean you can’t. I’ve literally seen you sleep with my own two human eyes.”

Alucard sighs a quiet sigh, presumably regretting that he knows you, before saying, “There were extenuating circumstances. I seem to recall your cat mistook me for a pillow, and I was loath to disturb him…”

“Don’t you blame this on Rigatoni! He has done nothing wrong, ever, in his life,” you huff. It’s hard to sound suitably reproachful while you’re struggling to suppress laughter, but you’re giving it your all. “My point is, if you just wanted to tell me I was right, you didn’t _have_ to do that in a midnight phone call.”

Frankly, it makes no sense. Even beyond the aforementioned long emails (you think he’s trying to recapture the bliss of a Regency heroine sitting down to write her letters), the two of you mainly communicate through text. And he’s a shit texter, too— like, “replying _Yes_ five hours later” levels of bad. If Alucard is calling you at all, let alone in the middle of the night, you expect to hear that the world is ending.

“Ah,” he says. And then there’s another weighty, lingering pause. “No. No, it’s not urgent. I… apologize. For distracting you.”

 _What the shit is going on_ , you think. The gears are turning in your brain, scrambling to parse the situation. You visualize him sitting in that flat he has in Prague, in the middle of the night, doing nothing of importance. Idly paging through some dusty old book, maybe, with a glass of wine in hand. And calling you on the phone to tell you something you already know— oh.

The realization hits you like a roundhouse kick to the head: he just wanted to talk to you, and you are actually the biggest idiot who ever lived.

“You’re not distracting me.” Your voice has gone too soft, suddenly. You try not to dwell on it. Alucard makes a dubious noise in reply. “Well, you kind of are,” you concede. “But it’s okay, I don’t mind. Honestly, the spell is a longshot anyway, but it’s either this or watching reruns of _Ancient Aliens_ until Morris comes to give me an update.”

You trail off, listening for any signs of his presence on the other end of the line, all the papers on the bed fully forgotten. He doesn’t say anything, but he hasn’t hung up, either. It’s lucky, then, that you can fill silence like it’s your job.

“You should come visit. Once you’re done in Prague,” you blurt out, and something in the air has shifted now, something you can’t put your finger on. It’s like feeling for a light switch in a pitch-black room. Like a melody you know you’ve heard before, but you can’t remember where. “The cat misses you. I mean, he pretends not to care, but I think your coats are his favorite place to sleep. And I—”

( _Miss you too. Wish you were here._ That sounds like a greeting card. _Never get tired of talking to you, actually, which is weird because I always get sick of people eventually and to be honest, your conversational skills are not the best._ Wow, that sounds even fucking worse.)

“I’ll take you to that ramen bar again,” you say. “The one that inexplicably only plays eighties goth rock.” He liked the soup there, you remember.

You hear him exhale, slow and soft. “I have no pressing obligations,” Alucard muses, which you recognize as the emotionally constipated equivalent of _I’d like that_. And it’s not as if this is completely uncharted territory. You’ve had dinner together before. He’s lived in your apartment for weeks at a time. But there’s always been a veneer of necessity around his presence; you requested his help at the museum, or he was on a mission of his own. Plausible deniability.

It’s not about necessity anymore. You just want him to be here.

 _Okay! Let’s table that thought!_ you tell yourself, because you’re not about to have a revelation at the Scrummy Bingus Hotel. “I’m honored to be your Plan B in the absence of supernatural disaster,” you joke, and really, you’ve recovered admirably fast from your harrowing brush with an emotion. “Hey, if you get the catacombs under control soon, I can give you a guided tour of the neighborhood’s best Halloween decorations.”

“A riveting tour, I’m certain,” says Alucard in that tone of voice that means he isn’t protesting in earnest, just being a brat. You purse your lips to keep yourself from smiling.

“Yeah, it _is_ riveting. I’m actually the greatest tour guide of our time, didn’t you know?”

“Is that why the museum has rejected every one of your programming suggestions for the last three years?” he deadpans, going right for your throat.

“Oh, fuck you,” you laugh. “The museum board lacks vision.” And you’re fully prepared to deliver a passionate defense of the exhibit you proposed on the evolutionary history of mothmen— but before you can explain the broad appeal of homolepidopterans to the museum-going public, you hear a pounding at the door and nearly drop the phone.

The knocking continues, more insistent. “We got something,” comes a raspy voice you recognize as belonging to Agent Morris. “You’re gonna want to see this.”

You like Morris. You do. Of all the bureau agents you’ve dealt with, he’s one of the most tolerable; he respects your field and keeps the macho bullshit to a minimum. At the moment, however, you want to wring his neck. “Shit,” you mutter, stretching your legs in a half-assed attempt to get up. “Speaking of supernatural disaster. Hang on a sec.”

The phone is still pressed to your ear as you hop off the bed (it creaks mournfully at the loss of your weight, because nothing in this place is well-maintained). You feel a peculiar swell of satisfaction hearing Alucard’s hum of agreement as he, indeed, hangs on a sec. Morris starts up the knocking again, yelling your name this time. “I’ll be right _there_ , I’m on a call!” you shout back, a little snippier than you intended.

“You have to go,” Alucard says. An observation, not a question.

“Looks like it, yeah.” While you’re relieved the bureau is making progress on the investigation — the sooner this situation is handled, the better — you can’t help but think they picked a terrible time to suddenly become competent. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s hardly your fault.” His voice remains convincingly unaffected. Still, you bristle at the idea of leaving him to another night of old books and silence. Especially after he’s made such a rare, deliberate effort to seek out your company.

So before you have a chance to second-guess yourself, you tell him, “I’ll call you back later tonight. You know, since you _don’t_ _sleep_.”

“If you have other duties to attend—”

“I want to call you back.”

He has no clever rebuttal to that, you note triumphantly.

That said— you probably shouldn’t keep Agent Morris waiting any longer than you already have. “Okay,” you murmur. “We’ll talk more when I get back. Maybe your mean little comments will lull me to sleep.” Alucard’s muffled laugh sends warmth creeping through your chest, as if he’s in this shitty motel room with you instead of four thousand miles away.

“I will await your return, then,” he says. And for now, that’s enough.


End file.
